快猫短视频

Tiny electronic backpacks for chickens听can automatically analyse their behaviour, which could reveal听when听something is wrong.

The backpacks are attached to the birds鈥� backs using straps and are filled with accelerometers that record their movements. An algorithm uses data from the sensors to identify when and for how long the chickens perform different behaviours. The team behind the idea call the devices 鈥淔itbits for chickens鈥�.

Monitoring different behaviours using the backpacks could help reveal whether farm birds are being disturbed by parasites such as the northern fowl mite, says Amy Murillo at the University of California, Riverside, one of the team. The mite feeds on chickens鈥� blood and mainly affects egg-laying hens, which are kept alive much longer than those bred for meat.

Currently, farmers have to check chickens manually and individually for signs of the mites. The technology could make monitoring the birds far less labour-intensive.

To train the system to automatically analyse the chickens鈥� movements, Murillo and her colleagues filmed hens wearing the backpacks. They then labelled the birds鈥� behaviour accordingly so that the system could associate the behaviours with movement data.

鈥淚t took a lot of annotating video,鈥� says Murillo. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very difficult because you can鈥檛 make chickens perform specific behaviours at specific times.鈥� Their algorithm can now automatically classify pecking, preening and dustbathing with over 85 per cent accuracy.

Another recently used accelerometers to detect when chickens fall. The technique could be particularly useful for monitoring the welfare of birds on farms that are switching from caged housing to multi-tier aviaries, through which hens may more freely move.

Reference:听